Getty Foundation
/OVERVIEW: An iconic arts funder, the Getty Foundation funds a variety of projects in support of the visual arts, art museums, art conservation, and art history. While visual art is prioritized, Getty also funds culture and the humanities. Grantmaking is global in scope, though some initiatives prioritize Los Angeles County.
IP TAKE: A major arts and humanities funder, the Getty Foundation refines its funding initiatives yearly to address timely issues and topics in the visual arts. In recent years, Getty has increasingly prioritized access and equity in the arts and has positioned itself as an advocate for the importance of the arts and humanities in a funding landscape that increasingly prioritizes STEM education. “Universities have … starved the humanities, and I think we do so at our peril,” Getty director Joan Weinstein told Inside Philanthropy in an interview.
Getty is a transparent funder, with a grants database available at its website along with detailed information about its programs. It accepts letters of inquiry and grant applications; each program has a different application procedure, so it’s important to carefully peruse the website. Getty’s staff welcomes contact, but it may take a while to hear back.
PROFILE: Created in 1984 and based in Los Angeles, The Getty Foundation is one of the J. Paul Getty Trust’s constituent programs. The foundation supports “individuals and institutions committed to advancing the greater understanding and preservation of the visual arts in Los Angeles and throughout the world.” While its specific funding priorities change frequently, the Getty Foundation is an important source of funding for visual arts, higher education art programs and humanities research.
Getty’s four core grantmaking areas currently include: Art History; Art Conservation; Museums & Archival Collections; and Professional Development.
Grants for Visual Arts
Visual arts constitute the foundation’s largest area of giving, and its programs and initiatives change frequently. Funding supports the production of public art exhibits at museums and galleries as well as art and architecture conservation and professional development programs for museum professionals. The following is a partial list of current initiatives:
Pacific Standard Time is an initiative that supports collaborative efforts for public exhibitions, programs and scholarly publications among arts institutions of Southern California. Past funding themes include Art x Science x LA, which explores the intersection of visual arts and physical science, and Pacific Standard Time, which explores L.A.’s art and architectural history from the 20th century.
The Paper Project supports training and professional development for curators of prints and drawings on paper. Grants support seminars, workshops, symposia, fellowships, research and exhibition and publishing projects. Past grantees of the program include professionals at New York’s Morgan Library and Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Fin-de-Siècle Museum in Belgium and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
Getty’s Conserving Canvas initiative invests in the training of professionals to restore and care for historical works of art. Global in scope, the program prioritizes the preservation of older works that have protective linings or backings, and for which there is a dearth of professional knowledge today. Past canvas grantees include the Dallas Museum of Art, the Fundación Arte y Solidaridad in Chile, the National Art Gallery, and the Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France.
Keeping It Modern is Getty’s current architectural initiative and focuses on the preservation of important buildings of the 20th century. Working globally since 2014, the program has funded restoration projects at the Dudley Zoo and Castle in the U.K., Kuwait’s Abraj Al-Kuwait, the White Tower of Ekaterinburg and the First Presbyterian Church in Stamford, Connecticut, to name a few. The Conserving Black Modernism program complements the Keeping it Modern program in that it focuses on historic Modern Movement sites throughout the United States created by Black architects and designers.
MOSAIKON works to preserve and promote “mosaics, both at archaeological sites and in museums and storage throughout the Mediterranean region.” Grantees include CICRP Belle de Mai, King's College London, and The British School at Rome, Italy.
Getty runs a Connecting Professionals/Sharing Expertise program to support the participation of professionals from underrepresented countries in international art history and conservation conferences and forums. Support has gone to the International Council of Museums, the International Council on Monuments and Sites, the College Art Association and the Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art.
The L.A. Arts COVID-19 Relief Fund was established in 2020 to provide emergency operating support and recovery grants to arts organizations in Los Angeles County.
Grants for Higher Education and Humanities Research
While institutions of higher education and university-based museums receive funding grants through Getty’s visual arts funding program, the Getty Foundation also supports higher education and humanities research through its internship and fellowship programs.
Named for former Getty Foundation director Deborah Marrow, Getty Marrow Undergraduate Internships aim to bring greater diversity to museum and visual arts professions by providing summer opportunities to undergraduate students at 161 arts organizations in the Los Angeles area. The program also offers professional development opportunities to alumni of the program. This program runs an open online application process with a due date in February of each year.
A variety of Getty Graduate Internships are open to graduate students in the visual arts and provide professional learning experiences at the J. Paul Getty Trust, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation or Getty Publications. This program also runs an open online application program with due dates in November.
Since 2017, the Getty Foundation has run its Postdoctoral Fellowships program in partnership with the American Council on Learned Societies. Fellowships prioritize emerging scholars whose work has the potential to “make substantial and original contributions to the understanding of art and its history,” including technical and digital art history. Fellowships are administered by the ACLS with input from the Getty Foundation. Fellowships are awarded in the amount of $65,000, and applications are accepted through the ACLS’s online application system.
The Getty Foundation also awards a series of Residential Grants and Fellowships to scholars working at the Getty Center. The Getty Rothschild Fellowships support scholars of art history as well as collecting or conservation of Getty collections. Getty also awards scholar, predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships to individuals whose work connects to an “annual theme.” Library Research Grants provide short term support for research that involves collections at the Getty Research Institute.
The Getty Foundation further supports humanities research in and outside of higher education via its Connecting Art Histories and Digital Art Histories initiatives.
Connecting Art Histories “aims to strengthen the discipline of art history globally and increase opportunities for sustained intellectual exchange across national and regional borders.”
One grant supported a graduate-level art history program at the State University of Campinas in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and another grant supported research seminars on artifacts from the Caucasus and eastern Anatolia at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.
Other humanities research grants have supported research at the Cyprus Institute, the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, the New Europe Foundation and the Centre for Advanced Study Sofia. This program accepts applications on an ongoing basis.
The Digital Art Histories Program acknowledges “the potentially transformative effect that digital technologies hold for the discipline of art history.”
Grantmaking aims to support scholars and projects that explore the role of technology in art history and provide training for art historians and other professionals in the use of related technologies.
Past grants have supported the Humanities Research Center at Rice University and a project at Stanford University that converted images and data from a Neolithic settlement in Turkey to an open online database. Application for this program is by invitation only.
Important Grant Details:
The Getty Foundation made about $25 million in grants in a recent year. Grants range anywhere from a few thousand to several million, depending on the scope of the project, with most internships and fellowships awarded in set amounts.
While many programs are global in scope, some initiatives specify funding for the Los Angeles area.
The foundation maintains a detailed, searchable grants database on its website.
The Getty Foundation accepts grants for its fellowships, internships, research grants and some of its other programs.
See the foundation’s application page and individual program pages linked above for additional information and due dates.
The foundation’s contact page provides email addresses for senior staff members. General inquiries may be directed to the foundation via email or telephone at 310-440-7320.
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